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The Web SiteIn anticipation of the next issue, the web site has been given a going over.

French AFFA Kickstarter/Indiegogo-style fundraiser is going on on the French equivalent, Ulule. This is for a French translation of Titan by Scriptarium as well as a new module and maps. Follow this link to join in and contribute!

French AFF

Scriptarium, the team behind Draco Venturus, has won the license to bring Graham Bottley's revised Advanced Fighting Fantasy to French speakers. To help get it into their hands they are running a subscription system to help get the book released. As a sweetener, the French edition of the book will feature an additional campaign of 4 or 5 new adventures complete with new artwork by Russ Nicholson and other French artists.

Recent-ish Reviews

Feedback isn't something that we got a lot of here, which sometimes makes it hard to estimate what fans want to read in the magazine. Luckily, we've been reviewed a couple of times recently. The first is a review of issue #5 in the French fan magazine Draco Venturus (issue #3 is due out in June!) which is dedicated to gamebooks in general as opposed to our tighter focus on Fighting Fantasy.

Here is a translation of the review (both the original review and translation are by Adrien Maudet):

Since September 2009, the English-speaking world of gamebooks knows the regular publication of Fighting Fantazine, an amateur fanzine dedicated to the Fighting Fantasy books, successfully taking up the torch of the mythical magazine Warlock.

The fifth issue is available for free download since the beginning of February 2011. It is endowed with a great feature, Turn to Paragraph 400, who reveals outcomes of the survey made last year with the readers, in partnership with the publisher Wizard Books.

70 gamebooks of the series were classified according to their score at first in various categories (intrigue, game, atmosphere and illustrations), then in a general ranking. The happy winners are... You have to read the fanzine to know them!

Besides a global analysis of the ranking, each of the first ten books benefits from an essay explaining the reasons of its success. These analysis are very enthusiastic without missing relevance, not hesitating for instance to take the necessary hindsight on the methodology having led to rankings. As for the bottom of the class, it is the subject of the regular funny column, Figthing Dantasy. Let's play billiard!

We also find the other usual columns. The rich current events in English-speaking interactive literature is covered in Omens and Auguries, Jamie Fry, the collector of Fighting Fantasy Collector, is invited at Ian Livingstone's home for a meeting marked by nostalgia (meeting which leaves us unsatisfied because we learn nothing about the next FF book written by the co-founder of the series), the second part of The Adventure Game explains us how to plan the writing of a gamebook and Graham Bottley is interviewed about the eagerly awaited republication of Advanced Fighting Fantasy.

Finally let us end this review of the fanzine with Dungeons and Dinosaurs, a big interview of John Sibbick (illustrator, among others, of Midnight Rogues). Today, he works as paleoartist by illustrating dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals (an argument furthermore in favor of the link held between the universe of the paleontology and universe of rpg : an article of the first issue of Draco Venturus is about this point!). The interview learns us on the route of the artist and is richly informed by preparatory sketches of covers illustrations.

To conclude (and before approaching the heart of any magazine dedicated to the genre, namely its interactive adventure), we can only invite everyone understanding English to get absorbed in these rich and fascinating 104 pages!

Bones of the Banished

This adventure of 274 sections takes you on the Plain of Bones, located in the southeast of Allansia. You are a young member of a tribe of hunters. Ngodo, leader of your people, died during a dinosaurs hunt without appointing successor. It is to the shaman Valgrek that returns the duty to summon the spirits of your ancestors to decide on the future of the tribe. So the new head will be appointed by the Rite of Banishment: during two days, all the men old enough to hunt will be excluded from the village and will have to look in the surrounding nature for the biggest and most terrible creatures. The one returning with the most impressive trophy will be crowned new leader of the tribe.

This synopsis heralds an original beginning of adventure. The first part of the quest will consist in going through the rather well described wilderness of the Plain of Bones to chase fierce creatures inspired from a mainly but not only prehistoric bestiary. So beside dinosaurs, we shall find big cats of all kinds or humanoids, such Lizards-Men of Silur Cha or Neanderthals , eternal enemies your tribe.

But rather quickly, the outlines of an intrigue more complex than a simple hunt are set up. A new mission will appear in the middle of the adventure, and will send you to investigate the ruins sprinkling the plain that are the vestiges haunted by a fallen empire.

Globally the adventure distances itself with its wild atmosphere which does not deprive it of interesting npc, as the rival hunters who you can meet on the plain, or some surprising meetings, as a Dwarf armed with a strange wooden stick spitting fire.

On the other hand, it is a rather difficult adventure. Reaching a successful ending will oblige you to put the hand on indispensable items. That's a rather frustrating thing since you can choose from the beginning several different ways. Some too frequent sudden deaths will come to increase the difficulty of the game.

Let us end with the illustrations which are here the fact of the author, Brett Schofield. The quality is very good, they depicts especially the terrible lizards for some of its. Distinction to the Natalie Gingerboom's magnificent cover too.

To conclude, Bones of the Banished is an adventure with an original intrigue, well written and exploiting intelligently the background of Allansia. Its difficulty and its old-school design can prevent the least persevering people reaching the end of the story, but that will not deprive them to pass a good moment in a very nice adventure.